Programme full

Methodological Innovations
W324, HAMISH WOOD BUILDING
Wednesday 15 April 2015 09:00 - 10:30
PAPER SESSION 1
SCISSORS, SAND AND THE CUTTING ROOM FLOOR: EMPLOYING VISUAL AND CREATIVE METHODS
ETHICALLY WITH MARGINALISED COMMUNITIES
In our visually saturated culture there is a growing recognition that visual images have the potential to evoke emphatic
understanding of the ways in which other people experience their worlds. There has been an increasing shift towards
employing techniques of visual data production with participants, which is often seen as a panacea for the problems of
power hierarchies, representation and voice in sociological research. However, the easy marriage between the visual
and the participatory needs to be questioned when we are working with marginalised groups and communities.
This panel session introduces three presentations that explore both the opportunities, and the ethical and practical
difficulties, raised by visual research approaches. Drawing on studies that employed the techniques of sandboxing,
collaging and film making, the panel considers the visual as a vehicle for participatory research whilst acknowledging
the power relations inherent in the processes of design, production and dissemination. Each presentation focuses on
one of these three aspects of the research process.
Dawn Mannay discusses design by reflecting on the sandboxing approach, ‘the world technique’; and responds to the
argument that therapeutic methods should not be taken out of the consulting room. Janet Fink presents insights into
data production drawing on community based inquiry and the process of creating collages. Helen Lomax considers
the challenges of employing a participatory approach to the editing and dissemination of filmed data, images and text.
Together the three papers respond to current debates around visual methodologies, participatory research and
situated ethics in work with marginalised communities.
Sandboxes, Psychoanalysis and Participatory Practice: Refiguring Therapeutic Techniques as Ethical Visual
Research Methods
Mannay, D., Edwards, V
(Cardiff University)
Visual images within social science research have become ubiquitous as the field has witnessed an increasing move
towards visual and creative methods of data production; employing photographs, collages, film and walking narratives.
However, some techniques of visual data production remain pariah sites because of their association with
psychoanalysis and therapeutic work. There is a reluctance to engage with psychoanalytically informed approaches
outside of therapy based settings and criticisms that doing so raises a number of ethical issues around the welfare of
participants.
This paper draws on ‘the world technique’ in which participants create three-dimensional scenes, pictures or abstract
designs in a tray filled with sand employing a wide range of miniature, realistic and fantasy, figures and small everyday
objects. The paper presents data from a study exploring the journeys of marginalised, non-traditional, mature students
in higher education, in Wales UK, to illustrate the potential of the sandbox for engaging with participants’ subjective
worlds and gaining a more nuanced understanding of the student experience.
The paper discusses the usefulness of the ‘world technique’ as a tool of qualitative research as well as reflecting on
the associated difficulties with the method; arguing that a reluctance to engage with psychoanalytically informed
approaches outside of therapy based settings could preclude a more nuanced understanding of participants subjective
lived experience. The paper argues that the ‘the world technique’ can be both a valuable and an ethical tool of
qualitative inquiry that allows participants an opportunity to share their subjective understandings through the medium
of metaphors.
Seen and Heard? Ethics and Voice in Participatory Visual Research With Children and Young People
Lomax, H.
(University of Northampton)
The last decade or so have seen a rapid rise in the use of participatory visual methods for working with so called
marginalised groups and an increasing array of techniques for doing so. Methods include digital story telling; filmmaking
and photography. Such methods, it is argued, enable researchers to work alongside participants, offering rich
understandings of the lives of those who may not otherwise engage with traditional social science methods and
supporting them to have a voice in matters that affect them.
69 BSA Annual Conference 2015
Glasgow Caledonian University